Photo: Roberto Daniel Avila | CC BY-SA 4.0 - iNaturalist

Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly (Glaucopsyche lygdamus palosverdesensis)

The Palos Verdes Blue is one of the world’s rarest butterflies. It also happens to be one of the most enchanting - resembling an astral starfield of onyx cast into a heaven of baby blue. A subspecies of the much more widespread Silvery Blue, it has only ever existed on the Palos Verdes Peninsula - a wealthy enclave south of Los Angeles with a unique maritime microclimate.

In 1982, the last of the Palos Verdes Blue butterfly’s remaining habitat was bulldozed by the city of Ranchos Palos Verdes to make a baseball field. It wasn’t seen again for a decade when it was discovered on land belonging to a nearby military fuel depot, whose restrictive zoning had accidentally saved a patch of habitat from development.

The butterfly is very vulnerable as it occupies a small ecological niche, relying entirely on just two species of plants for its survival. Conservationists have a captive population in reserve, and reintroductions are regularly made.

NatureServe: Critically Imperiled (T1)

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Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly - Meet The…